That was also the case during the last major government shutdown in 1995-1996, but private homeowners on the area's land were allowed to stay. Not this time. In a development which the national establishment press has ignored, a Democratic presidential administration is doing what it has constantly told the American people Republicans would do: kick elderly people out of their homes. Excerpts from the related Saturday evening Las Vegas Journal-Review report follow the jump (HT Twitchy; bolds are mine):

Shutdown forces owners to leave Lake Mead homes

He’s one of an estimated 60 families with vacation homes along the lake who were given notice by the National Park Service earlier this week to gather their stuff and leave, according to Christie Vanover, a spokeswoman for the Lake Mead Recreational Area.

The homes — from Stewart’s Point on the north to Katherine’s Landing and Temple Bar on the south — sit on federal land.

As a result, the federal government shutdown left Hitchcock just 24 hours to evacuate his two-bedroom, two bath cabin in Stewart’s Point, about 70 miles northeast of Las Vegas.

Although Vanover couldn’t put an exact number on how many residents were actually living in their vacation homes at the time of the government’s closure, she wanted to make one thing clear: “They are all vacation homes and everybody who lives in them are considered visitors,” she said. “If anybody needs to gather their personal belongings, we’re not going to deny them access. They can go do that. They just can’t spend the nights there or have barbecues during the day.

“They need to get in and get out.”

And so the vacation homes will remain vacant until Congress can compromise and end the shutdown, which entered its fifth day on Saturday.

“I said, ‘What if I don’t leave,” Hitchcock recalled. “And they told me, they’d issue me a citation, and when I asked them what would happen if I didn’t pay the citation, they said they’d take me to jail. And when I asked them which jail I was going to go to, they said ‘Henderson.'"

Politically speaking, Hitchcock is a lifelong Republican and proud of it. In fact, he sports a shirt that says, “The only thing I hate about Nevada … Harry Reid.”

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that reporter Tom Ragan worked awfully hard to keep someone out of his report, namely Barack Obama, whose National Park Service has adopted an aggressive, petulant posture in "protecting" war memorials, monuments, recreational areas, and parks.

The Associated Press has one story about Lake Mead, but it's about the resolution of Erin Brockovich's drunk boating case. The recreation area's ejection of homeowners is not at the AP's national site.

The "full coverage" list on "Lake Mead" at Google News returned 13 items at 11 p.m. ET, none of which originated from an establishment press outlet.

There isn't a snowball's chance in Hades that the national press would miss the opportunity to report on Republicans kicking elderly people out of their homes if it were indeed occurring.